How to make your own gaming system using Raspberry Pi

Great gaming on ARM devices that have slightly poorer performance than an average x86 based PC device is possible. The only vital condition for that is using some kind of a game emulator. ​So, to clarify this issue, I’d like to look through the possible solutions to bring great games on Raspberry Pi as a bright representative device from the world of ARM-based devices. The gaming emulator for Raspberry Pi ​can be a piece of software to create a proper environment for the games to be set up and launched on this type of hardware. For that reason three options are
applicable. Find them below.

Different ways to play games on ARM

Basically, there are three main options to emulate console games on Raspberry Pi or any other ARM
devices.

● Native Raspberry Pi Games. ​As all Linux users know, there is a great software and apps storage called “Repository”. So, in this repository a lot of DOS games are kept, that are adapted for Raspberry Pi.
● Emulation Station​ – Ancient and very first game emulator. Emulate very old consoles and offers DOS games.
● Retropie – ​modern analog of the first app. It includes features of Emulation Station, and offers much more, including all the modern consoles like Sega, Nintendo, and PlayStation.
● ExaGear Desktop​. This is a very powerful emulator of software, which is able not only port whatever Retropie and Emulation Station may offer but also add different PC games, from very old Dune 2000 to quite an up-to-date Diablo II or alike.

Native Raspberry Pi Games

As I have already mentioned earlier, there’s a Repository – supported by the community open source storage of different pieces of software and applications. Anyone can access that repository via terminal and download, setup or update the supported software with the help of the special commands.

So is about the Raspberry Pi games. The first command you may want to try is$ apt-cache search games

You’ll see a very long-read of a list of everything that system will find, which includes the word “games”. Try to look through this list and find what you’ve already got pre-installed in your Pi.

But, in most cases, this will look really tricky and confusing. So, It’s much better and more convenient to use the list below. This list contains the games (and a few emulators) to be downloaded and launched with a simple “apt-get” command. The command is:

EmulationStation

The EmulationStation console emulator was the first attempt to gather everything that in one free and open-source emulation machine to be set up on Linux, Debian and other OS, including Raspbian.

The emulators, you can enjoy contains quite a famous names, such as Nintendo, Sega, SNES, Atari, NeoGeo and much more. The main feature of EmulationStation is that it works almost with any controller and you can regulate the number of emulators while downloading to save time on installation. So, to install the Emulation Station you need to open up a terminal and follow the simple steps.

After getting acquainted with all that Retropie gaming diversity, you’d probably want to install it on your Raspbian. This isn’t a tricky thing. As I’ve already pointed out, Retropie is much more user-friendly. So, you’ve got two options: make an SD card to boot the Only Retopie as an operating system or to install Retropie atop your own OS (Raspbian in this article).

Making a Retropie image on an SD Card

The things you need to do are:

1. Download the proper image for your Raspberry Pi model from their official website: https://retropie.org.uk/download/
2. Find some Windows PC and insert the SD card in.
3. Download the auxiliary app – Win32DiskImager. You need this to create the proper file system as it differs from the Windows one.
4. As soon as you install the Win32DiskImager, simply launch it, find the Retropie archive you’ve downloaded from their website and push the button “READ”.
5. All set. Now you can safely eject the SD card and insert it into the Raspberry Pi device. The Retropie interface will boot automatically

Installing Retropie on Raspbian

This way is a bit more complicated and fulfilled from the terminal with special commands. So, open up a terminal.
1. Update the system$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

2. Verify your “Locale” settings$ locale

3. You should see:

If anything is unset, use the command to correct the parameter:$ sudo update-locale

4. After you’ve made sure the locales are set, install the prerequisites for Retropie:$ sudo apt-get install git lsb-release

Playing PC Games on Raspberry Pi

All that we’ve looked through above was about console retro gaming. Now, I’d like to add one more feature for your Raspberry Pi top male it the complete gaming machine. Bring PC games on your RPi!
What I mean isn’t just the old DOS games but literally PC ones, such as Counter-Strike, Diablo II or Stronghold Crusaders, for example. This is possible because of the new emulator for Raspbian called ExaGear. The main peculiarity of this emulator is that it supports the hardware graphics acceleration and is able to run x86 exe files on ARM-based devices.

All you need is to install ExaGear , then install Wine, which is an additional app. Launch ExaGear to create the x86 environment within ARM-based processors. And finally, launch Wine to install and
start any x86 Windows game. The only thing you should bear in your mind is that the number of Windows games, unfortunately, is limited. The limit is set with the hardware limitations., so it’s, of course, impossible to run Destiny 2 on your Pi, as it is simply way too weak device for that. If you’d like to get the full installation step-by-step guide and the games it’s possible to start this way, read the Ultimate Retropie Guide for 2018.

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